1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to digital publishing and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for selective synchronization of a display layout.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the rapid growth of the Internet, people are moving to viewing content online. A document such as a magazine, brochure, or online book is designed for a display in a particular medium, for example, print. However, this display, referred to as the source layout, is read by others on a variety of display (or target) devices such as tablet computers, mobile phones, PDAs, laptop computers and the like. These target devices possess different characteristics, such as screen size or resolution, thereby establishing different target display layouts for different target devices. Digital publishing often involves maintaining multiple copies of target display layouts for use on different target devices. These target display layouts comprise multiple target page elements similar to those on the source layout. The target display elements may be linked to a source display element for synchronization such that a modification to one or more attributes of a source display element is reflected in the target display elements.
The display elements (target page elements and source page elements), may, for example, be drawing objects and have multiple attributes, such as shape, size, color, transparency and the like. A majority of the page elements are similar across these various target display layouts. However, designers may want to change a few attributes of the target page elements like size, shape, and color to suit the need for the target device, while being able to keep the target page item synchronized with its source page element for the rest of the attributes.
Currently, a designer must create a source layout and a target layout separately defining the elements and their attributes independently. The selective updating of target attributes is currently not possible.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus for selective synchronization of a display layout (e.g., target display layout) that allows selective update of attributes of target display elements.